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The Entry of Science and History in the College Curriculum, 1865–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sherman B. Barnes
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Extract

Historians of education are today often reluctant to condemn the post-Civil War college for its resistance to the mercantile spirit or the university idea. The “inflexibility” of James McCosh, Noah Porter, or Woodrow Wilson receives recognition as a struggle “… to preserve the western cultural heritage and to inculcate a respectable form of mental discipline.” Departure from the common learning of mathematical and linguistic disciplines becomes a story of increasing disagreement and uncertainty concerning the basic principles of higher education. In the more conventional narrations sympathetic to the revolution in higher education after 1870 the revolution develops as a sharp break from the old collegiate regime rather than in continuity, context, and dialogue with that old regime. Actually, the very wealth of arguments offered by each side—whether by Noah Porter or by William Graham Sumner—suggests depth of intellectual resources within the traditional college rather than rigid inflexibility or a state of bankruptcy ripe for unthinking flight to untried novelties. In this paper an attempt is made to depict the argumentation accompanying the reception of history and science in the curriculum—the two subjects which in the judgment of William T. Harris were the most comprehensive novel forms of learning which were threatening the traditional curriculum of classics, logic, mathematics, metaphysics, theology. Familiar ideas from the classical and theological traditions played important roles in domesticating historical and scientific knowledge in the curriculum. As in the case of William Rainey Harper, the same men who pioneered in building universities could be Cassandras on the price to be paid for specialization. Both resistance and welcome offered by classics men need to be differentiated from resistance and welcome having theological roots.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 1964 , pp. 44 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 1964, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

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